


A Friend of Mine

by allawashwithangels



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 19:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20233447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allawashwithangels/pseuds/allawashwithangels
Summary: Hermes ushers countless souls to the Hadestown line. He doesn't remember them all. But he remembers her.





	A Friend of Mine

The station marked the end of the line. 

At least that’s what the maps all said. One thin black line punctuated along the way with hashes terminating in a nowhere town on a nowhere plain. 

The terminal - all cracked cement and overgrown weeds - was the only landmark for miles of flat earth where cattle once grazed the fields down to the dust before moving on to lusher plains. Visitors stumbled in from time to time, on their way to their final destination. They stayed as long as they could afford, until there was no other way to go but down. 

Hermes swept his arm in a large arc over the dull wood of the bar. All good train stations needed a good bar he thought, soothing the passers-by when they needed an edge taken off. One final glass of whiskey before Hades’ prohibition below. 

On this evening, the station was empty save for one man huddled in a corner, nursing a gin and tonic. No trains had come or gone all day. Hermes liked the days that he didn’t pour the whiskey neat so it went down like fire as the train clanged and roared its way into the platform. 

Nights like this, Hermes always felt her here as she first appeared to him, coat hanging from her tiny frame as if hung on wire. She drank hot tea when she had some coins to spare, and he liked to add a splash of whiskey to help keep her warm. 

In the distance, the moan of the train whistle echoed like a banshee across the dry fields. The man looked up, then at Hermes. He took a swig of his gin to find only ice left. 

Hermes took the gin from off the shelf. “Still time for a top off, brother?” 

“Not gettin’ this one. Not yet.” He replied, making no move to take his moth-eaten coat from the back of this chair. The whistle blew again. He pushed his glass toward Hermes, who clocked the crumpled ticket clutched tight in his dirty fist. 

“Sure looks like you’ve got a ticket to ride. Won’t be another train tonight I reckon. Last chance to get somewhere warm.”

When the glass was two fingers full he pushed it back and turned for the bar once more. He heard what was left of the ice clink and the gulp of a desperate sip. 

The would-be-traveler's voice cracked when he spoke next. “You ever known anyone to come back? From...down there.” 

Hermes stopped. He poured himself a glass as well - no use in this stranger drinking alone. 

“I knew one who tried.”

Out the window, snow flurries danced over the plains. 

And in his mind she was there, laughing with his patrons while Orpheus played his songs. She was there scrounging in her pockets for nickels and dimes while he slipped an extra scoop of potatoes into a bowl for her at dinnertime. She was there sharing her stories, always waiting for the boy to emerge from his daydreams and join her. 

“I’ve met types like him before,” she confided to Hermes once, a sly smile tugging at her mouth. “A girl on her own doesn’t get far before some guy thinks he wants to save her.” 

She talked of the city boys that kept her for a night or two before they both got bored, and the country boys that wanted to tame her. How all of them moved on to the next amusement in time, just like she knew they would. 

“But something about this one is different?” The doubt was clear and pointed in Hermes voice. He loved the boy like his own, but he had a lot of growing up to do. 

Eurydice smiled again, and as she shook her head her cropped haircut tickled her cheeks. “Nah. He’s just the same.” 

He couldn’t help it - his bark of a laugh burst forth uncalled for. “Then why the hell are you still here?” 

She cupped her tea and rolled her shoulders. The whiskey had started its good work. 

“None of them sang to me the way he does.” 

The train had pulled into the station, brakes screeching. The man stared down at his drink, refusing to look up. But the ticket sat auspiciously on the table taunting him. 

The conductor, a gruff man that stepped off for a smoke and a chat every now and again, stuck his head out of the window in his car. Hermes gestured one moment to his sole customer and stepped outside into the cold. 

“Evenin’ brother. You got one in there for me?” The conductor pushed his cap up on his forehead and wiped his brow. 

“I think this one’s still kickin’. Tomorrow’ll be busier, if this weather keeps on.” 

“I’ll push on then. See you in the mornin’, Herm.” 

“Alright there Charon, I’ll be seein’ you.”  
Hermes closed the door against the wind. When he turned back to his nameless companion, he found the man had fallen asleep at the table, fingers curled loosely around his glass. 

The next day he would be gone. They always boarded that train at some point, sometimes even before their money ran out, souls lost faster than means. 

When it was Eurydice’s turn, Hermes had seen it coming for days. 

She hadn't been able to pay for even a cup of tea for a week. Her eyes were dull while they traced the wood grain of the bar. She had nowhere else to go while he wasted away in their shared room above the station, scribbling poetry on napkins and used up legal pads. Hermes watched her warily with each train that came on their own scattered schedule, wondering which one she would board. Finally, one came that she did. 

“Have you even told him?” He asked her with a soft hand on her shoulder as she tried to head for the platform. 

“He wouldn't hear me if I did.” She paused a moment, taking a deep breath. A wan, weary smile ghosted across her sunken face. “I’m just moving on the the next destination like I always knew I would.”

“Why do you keep going like this honey?”

“Because...I get to have the good moments. Before the end. You never know, it might turn out sometime.” And she left, chasing another maybe. 

Hermes kept on wiping down his bar, as if being the one to stay behind year after year didn’t beat him down just a little with every frail body that walked onto that platform for the first and only time. 

When his gin-drinking friend woke up in a hungover haze the next day, the resolution in his clouded face was clear. Another member of Hades’ army soon to be re-born. Hermes gave him water and made sure he made it to the door without falling. From there he was Charon’s charge. 

But he turned around, and croaked out a question from under the rotting door frame. 

“What are my chances d’ya think? Can I make it?” 

Hermes lifted his head and gave the man a long, hard stare. Took in his tattered coat, full of holes. Sized up his knocking knees and bony shoulders. Saw exactly the kind of person that Hades sucked into his lair and never let go. 

“Brother, you can try. You should always try.”  
His eyes narrowed and he stood up a little straighter. Defiant. Sobering up. “Just another tragedy in the making?” 

Charon pulled the whistle and it rang sharp in their ears, hacking at the stale air dividing the inside from the outside. 

“It’s a sad tale, yes. A tragedy. I’ll keep running this bar, and watching the souls come and go like you. Listening to their stories, all alike. Helping them to the door when they need it.” 

“Why keep singing the same sad song when you know how it ends?” 

A flash of red caught the edges of Hermes’ gaze, but when his eyes cut quickly to the dark windows of the nearest train car over the man’s shoulder, they were empty and covered in frost. Hints of Eurydice always haunted the winters. 

“Who else will?” He hesitated a moment. “And because it might turn out this time." In his imagination, her ghost sat at her corner bar stool, lifting a dusty teacup to him in a toast. "I learned that from a friend of mine.” 

The whistle blew.


End file.
